ITC: Apple loses against Kodak as it gets initial win against HTC

The ITC has ruled that Kodak isn't infringing on Apple's digital imaging …

The US International Trade Commission ruled on Monday that Kodak does not infringe on two of Apple's digital imaging patents. The ruling settles part of the dispute between the two companies—the ITC is set to make a final ruling on whether Apple (and RIM) infringe Kodak patents later this year. Meanwhile, the ITC has so far sided with Apple in its case against Android smartphone maker HTC.

The ITC decided, despite Apple's request, to not review the initial decision of an administrative law judge (ALJ), who ruled in May that Kodak did not infringe two of Apple's patents. When the ITC investigates patent infringement claims, the companies involved in a dispute submit filings to the commission. ITC staff make an initial recommendation, which is considered along with oral arguments and other evidence by an administrative law judge. The ALJ's decision can either be upheld or overturned by a six-person panel if a review of the decision is requested.

Kodak initially targeted both Apple and RIM earlier this year with patent infringement lawsuits and ITC claims, alleging that both companies' smartphones infringed on its patents related to digital imaging. Apple fired back with counterclaims as well as its own federal lawsuit and ITC action.

An ALJ had initially ruled that Apple and RIM did not infringe Kodak's patents, though the final determination on that ruling has yet to be made. The review commission stated that under some interpretations of some of Kodak's patent claims, certain Apple and RIM hardware could be deemed infringing. Further review by the judge is expected before a final ruling is issued.

Both rulings will likely have an impact on the patent infringement complaints in federal district court.

Meanwhile, the ITC has so far sided with Apple in its original complaint against smartphone maker HTC. The initial determination of the ALJ in that case said that HTC's Android devices infringe on two of Apple's patents. HTC is naturally requesting a review to reverse that decision, but if upheld, it could have a significant impact on Apple's other cases against Android makers, particularly Motorola, as Apple has asserted both patents in question against the company. Since at least one of the patents is believed to affect Android itself, it could open up other handset makers to patent licensing liability.

Apple recently filed an additional complaint with the Trade Commission against HTC citing additional patents and naming more recent HTC hardware as infringing. The company has also targeted Samsung's Android-based smartphones and tablets with legal action for "blatantly copying" Apple's designs for the iPhone and iPad. It's clear that Apple is targeting Android indirectly by going after top handset makers.

Google's Eric Schmidt claims Apple's lawsuits are due to jealousy. "Because they are not responding with innovation, they're responding with lawsuits," Schmidt said during Google's recent Mobile Revolution conference. "We have not done anything wrong and these lawsuits are just inspired by our success."

While the Android platform as a whole may be outselling Apple's iOS platform, we doubt that Apple truly believes it isn't succeeding in the mobile device market. The iPad continues to dominate tablet market share, and though the iPhone makes up just a small amount of the overall mobile phone market, Apple commands the greatest percentage of the market's profits. And developers still seem to favor iOS over Android in many cases.

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War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

When creating Ultima Online, Richard Garriott had grand dreams. He and Starr Long planned on implementing a virtual ecology into their massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It was an ambitious system, one that would have cows that graze and predators that eat herbivores. However, once the game went live a small problem had arisen...

War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

When creating Ultima Online, Richard Garriott had grand dreams. He and Starr Long planned on implementing a virtual ecology into their massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It was an ambitious system, one that would have cows that graze and predators that eat herbivores. However, once the game went live a small problem had arisen...

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

An import ban would be a much bigger blow to HTC than to Google. US sales account for only a small minority of total Android sales anyway. They're a much higher fraction of high-margin devices, but those margins are going to HTC, not to Google. Google makes money from serving ads, and I have yet to see evidence that a typical iPhone user uses many fewer Google services than a typical Android user.

I think this is were a lot of people that aren't familiar with intellectual property law get tripped up and make erroneous conclusions. Patents are all about specific implementations of ideas, not ideas themselves. You can't patent a "rectangle," as someone else suggested, but you could potentially patent a mechanism that generates perfectly formed rectangles.

Apple doesn't have any patent on "digital signal processing," but it's certainly plausible that they have developed some novel way of doing it with some combination of hardware and software. I think the particular patent in this case deals with handling real-time processing within an otherwise non-realtime system. I haven't examined the patents in question very closely, but that is a very general take on what it involves.

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

What you think is mistaken unless you can defend the patent claims. Here are the links to the two patents, 5,946,647 and 6,343,263 that ALLEGEDLY are violated.

If you can tell me that either of those two items supports your wildly conclusory claim that Google 'slapped together a copycat os', then my respect for your opinions would rise from nonexistent to at least adequate.

BTW, this is legal obfuscation at its finest. The key to look for are keywords like 'cpu' and 'dma' - basically each of these software patents has to pretend that its having an effect on hardware, so they end up describing how a computer works each time. My computer program to search for porn could be ' an invention whereby a cpu interoperates with memory in executing sequentially a series of software instructions that query html text documents containing pictures of naked ladies' Anything can be made to sound innovative.

The first one, btw, appears to be the mindblowingly complex method of identifying telephone numbers in a text message and adding the number to your address book. Sounds like a good idea. Shouldn't, in any rational universe, be patentable.

This whole thing is a charade. But please, real patent lawyers, explain why what you do isn't complete farce.

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

I seem to recall Microsoft getting sued over it and settling out of court to pay license fees. As for the others... just because Apple hasn't gone after them yet doesn't mean that they haven't "infringed" just as much as Google has.

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

I've read the patents. One seems to give apple exclusive control over media streaming over any sort of network, and the other is a patent for a program highlighting things like URL's and phone numbers and providing a context menu for them.

These are the patents that Apple holds that the ITC says HTC devices infringe:

"U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data" (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of "phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates" and the ability to perform "related actions with that data"; one example is that "the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user's interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number")"

This is basically Apple's Data Detectors feature first introduced in some earlier version of Mac OS X (I'm guessing, but I think it was Panther).

"U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data" (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent "relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications")"

As an example of the jawdroppingly insane claim that Apple brought here, here's a post from their accusation against Android's 'linkify' feature, cut from the FOSS patent link above. Basically, they don't think any software program should be able to analyze text messages and make automatic links to the phone numbers and web addresses without paying Apple a fee. That's ludicrous and immoral and embodies everything thats wrong with software patents. They could have kept this patent for defensive purposes, but they are baldfacingly out there suing competitors. Here's the nonsense.

Quote:

The Accused HTC Android Products contain a computer-based system for detecting structures in data and performing actions based on detecting structures, and comprises an input device for receiving data. For instance, the HTC Nexus One contains a 3.7 inch AMOLED touchscreen. (Ex. 26-A, Nexus One User Manual at 327.) The Nexus One thus includes an input device to receive computer data, from which it will detect structures, such as phone numbers and email addresses, in data such as email and SMS messages. (Ex. 26-A, Nexus One User Manual at 208.) By way of example, the functionality within the Nexus One includes Android's "Linkify" functionality, which "take[s] a piece of text and a regular expression and turns all of the regex matches in the text into clickable links. This is particularly useful for matching things like email addresses, web urls, etc. and making them actionable."

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

Did you read the patents? They are even worse that I had believed. Really, finding structures in data? Determining how to deal with different types of data being received at the same time?

Software patents are about as productive as patenting paragraphs in a book and add up to the same thing!

It's an immature response because it puts up a strawman that it's impossible to respond with both innovation and lawsuits, and that to defend what you believe is yours is unreasonable. The schoolyard analogy is to claim they should have fought fairly instead of tattling to the teacher.

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

Did you read the patents? They are even worse that I had believed. Really, finding structures in data? Determining how to deal with different types of data being received at the same time?

Software patents are about as productive as patenting paragraphs in a book and add up to the same thing!

1) I read analysis of the patent claims. I do not have time to pour through the patents themselves and honestly I don't care that much.2) These are not 'software patents'. They do not patent lines of code. These are specific ways of doing things, and once again other competitors have managed to do them without running afoul of these patents.

If you think all of these software patents are ridiculous, you should read up on Human Genome Patents. They are literally out there slapping patents on actual genetic sequences, and the results can be catastrophic. Thankfully, some judges are seeing the light.

...Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision....

They haven't sued them, because those companies have plenty of patents that Apple infringes on. I remember when WebOS first came out and Apple hinted that they were going after Palm for infringement. Palm laughed because Apple likely infringed on a lot more of their patents. One of many sources: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/appl ... -analysis/

If you think Google hasn't innovated with Andriod, you're greatly mistaken. HTC doesn't have nearly as many patents, because for a long time they simply built devices for others to put their name on. Apple is suing them, because they are a small player with a small patent portfolio and without a huge war chest of cash. If Apple had guts, they'd go after Google, but then Google would counter sue and it would get very messy.

This "finding structures in data" is completely and utterly absurd. I've been writing data conversion routines for over 20 years, and in that time, I've done this sort of thing many, many, many times when dealing with variable-length records, or even when extracting data from text-based sources.

Look for ###-###-#### as per a phone number, and then perform secondary verification with lookup against an area code table. Look for dates ##-##-####, make sure the first two digits are under 12 and the last four fall within an acceptable timeframe for the type of data being parsed (eg 1900-2100).

How they could ever have been given a patent on something so blatantly basic is inconceivable.

As an example of the jawdroppingly insane claim that Apple brought here, here's a post from their accusation against Android's 'linkify' feature, cut from the FOSS patent link above. Basically, they don't think any software program should be able to analyze text messages and make automatic links to the phone numbers and web addresses without paying Apple a fee. That's ludicrous and immoral and embodies everything thats wrong with software patents. They could have kept this patent for defensive purposes, but they are baldfacingly out there suing competitors. Here's the nonsense.

Quote:

The Accused HTC Android Products contain a computer-based system for detecting structures in data and performing actions based on detecting structures, and comprises an input device for receiving data. For instance, the HTC Nexus One contains a 3.7 inch AMOLED touchscreen. (Ex. 26-A, Nexus One User Manual at 327.) The Nexus One thus includes an input device to receive computer data, from which it will detect structures, such as phone numbers and email addresses, in data such as email and SMS messages. (Ex. 26-A, Nexus One User Manual at 208.) By way of example, the functionality within the Nexus One includes Android's "Linkify" functionality, which "take[s] a piece of text and a regular expression and turns all of the regex matches in the text into clickable links. This is particularly useful for matching things like email addresses, web urls, etc. and making them actionable."

Silly man, they can easily get around it by simply not performing the action on a device containing memory, a cpu, an input device, an output device, and a user interface. It's not like we really need all that anyway right?

It's saddening to know that this idea is only a patent because it describes it taking place on a computer. Not even how they achieved the action, just that it occurs on a computer.

...Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision....

They haven't sued them, because those companies have plenty of patents that Apple infringes on. I remember when WebOS first came out and Apple hinted that they were going after Palm for infringement. Palm laughed because Apple likely infringed on a lot more of their patents. One of many sources: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/appl ... -analysis/

Nice layman's analysis, but companies don't have emotions and Palm did not 'laugh'. If there was infringement there would be negotiations eventually leading to a cross licensing agreement, a cessation of infringement or royalties. Engadget can believe whatever it wants of course, I know it gets more clicks to play it up like a Shakespearean drama.

Quote:

If you think Google hasn't innovated with Andriod, you're greatly mistaken. HTC doesn't have nearly as many patents, because for a long time they simply built devices for others to put their name on. Apple is suing them, because they are a small player with a small patent portfolio and without a huge war chest of cash. If Apple had guts, they'd go after Google, but then Google would counter sue and it would get very messy.

- How has Google innovated with Android, the OS? What does it do that nobody else does? So far as I can tell, the answer to that is "Innovative economic model" which is valid, but unfortunatly it was enabled by avoiding actual OS development and simply taking other people's work in a lot of cases, while building on a foundation(Linux) that they did not have to pay for. Which is fine on the last point, but again it puts a major hit on the idea that they were 'innovative', Linus and his team innovated the OS, Google just assembled a bunch of pieces and tossed their own me-too services on top of it.

- HTC is not the only target. Samsung, Motorola and others are as well. Samsung especially is not a small corporation, and they are already in negotiations with Microsoft for a license agreement. If they would rather pay than fight legally, that strongly implies that they agree with the assessment of Android as an infringing product. There was an article today about two major Chinese phone makers re-evaluating thier committment to Android as well in the wake of these lawsuits.

- The reason nobody is going after Google directly is because Google does not make and import a phone to the US. Putting the code out there does not necessarily make them liable for it. Its a FOSS project, Google simply has their own branch that they share with phone makers. The ITC cannot tell them to stop importing it, because its not being imported. As a result of this model, the liability is on those who make products and import them to the US based on Android, not on Google themselves. If Google had guts they would legally indemnify their customers like Microsoft and most major corporations do. Then the fight WOULD go to Google automatically as they would step into any case against an Android phone maker by default.

1) I read analysis of the patent claims. I do not have time to pour through the patents themselves and honestly I don't care that much.2) These are not 'software patents'. They do not patent lines of code. These are specific ways of doing things, and once again other competitors have managed to do them without running afoul of these patents.

Are you really commenting without even bothering to read the material? Why are you still talking? Don't brag about your ignorance.

For your #2, patent 5,946,647 is clearly a software patent - see the code words 'system and method'. They're just trying to pretend it isn't.

It is ABSOLUTELY not the case that other competitors do not run afoul of this one just because Apple isn't suing them at the moment. They may have cross-licensing agreements with Microsoft on this, or don't care, or actually ARE suing them.

An extremely good counterexample of how to deal with your patents has to do with Google's very very innovative MapReduce patent. It describes some truly interesting wizardry for distributed systems. 7,650,331

In every way, Hadoop copied, used, implemented, and exploits this. They are wildly infringing and profiting. Guess what? Google HASN'T sued anybody. They clearly patented the idea to claim ownership and possibly for protection, but they aren't out suing anyone. And if any software patent is valid, I'd vote for that one, given the amazing industries building themselves around it. Ars itself worried about this here:

Google's Eric Schmidt claims Apple's lawsuits are due to jealousy. "Because they are not responding with innovation, they're responding with lawsuits," Schmidt said during Google's recent Mobile Revolution conference. "We have not done anything wrong and these lawsuits are just inspired by our success."

Alright SquirrelBoy, why don't you release the algorithm for Google Adsense. If you don't want to make it public, how about releasing it just to Microsoft and Baidu?

- How has Google innovated with Android, the OS? What does it do that nobody else does? So far as I can tell, the answer to that is "Innovative economic model" which is valid, but unfortunatly it was enabled by avoiding actual OS development and simply taking other people's work in a lot of cases, while building on a foundation(Linux) that they did not have to pay for. Which is fine on the last point, but again it puts a major hit on the idea that they were 'innovative', Linus and his team innovated the OS, Google just assembled a bunch of pieces and tossed their own me-too services on top of it.

The DALVIK runtime is me-too service?

reflex-croft wrote:

If they would rather pay than fight legally, that strongly implies that they agree with the assessment of Android as an infringing product.

Actually, that strongly implies that they think it would cost more money to fight it out in court than pay a licensing fee - and that's it. Paying a licensing fee is not an admission of guilt; it's a way to avoid being blown up while navigating the minefield of software patents that now exist.

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

Did you read the patents? They are even worse that I had believed. Really, finding structures in data? Determining how to deal with different types of data being received at the same time?

Software patents are about as productive as patenting paragraphs in a book and add up to the same thing!

Sounds like you never read past the abstract. That, or you didn't comprehend what you read. The valid parts of the patent are in the claims section. Everything else is but background to help the person who reads it understand what the patent actually is.

It's not about identifying different types of data, its about doing that intelligently inside UNSTRUCTURED data. For example, you open a generic document from a web site, and inside that document are addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and more. You know what a formal letter looks like as does anyone who passed 5th grade, but try explaining that to a computer. Thats hard enough when you have a basic data structure like a formal letter, not try doing it for a tweet, or data dumped out of some web script. This is a VERY complex task, practically bordering on AI. And it;'s not just limited to phone numbers and URLs and addresses, and it has to do all this without actually looking anything up online itself to verify the data is what it thinks it is.

It's an immature response because it puts up a strawman that it's impossible to respond with both innovation and lawsuits, and that to defend what you believe is yours is unreasonable. The schoolyard analogy is to claim they should have fought fairly instead of tattling to the teacher.

What an ironic comment...Maybe they are "defending what they believe is theirs" or are just sue-happy, like what he actually said.

It's not about identifying different types of data, its about doing that intelligently inside UNSTRUCTURED data. For example, you open a generic document from a web site, and inside that document are addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and more. You know what a formal letter looks like as does anyone who passed 5th grade, but try explaining that to a computer. Thats hard enough when you have a basic data structure like a formal letter, not try doing it for a tweet, or data dumped out of some web script. This is a VERY complex task, practically bordering on AI. And it;'s not just limited to phone numbers and URLs and addresses, and it has to do all this without actually looking anything up online itself to verify the data is what it thinks it is.

Please tell me that you don't really believe that one company should be able to patent the right to search a block of text for a 10-digit phone number and replace it with a link to the phone dialer? Or finding text beginning with "http" and making it a link to the web browser.

Do you... really ... believe that's good, fair, right, productive, regardless of whether the dumbshit US Patent office approved it. If the names of the companies weren't Apple or Google, would you have the same arguments? I'll admit to being a bit of a Google partisan, but only because I agree with their actions in these cases and I strongly, in every fiber of my being, disagree with Apple.

- How has Google innovated with Android, the OS? What does it do that nobody else does? So far as I can tell, the answer to that is "Innovative economic model" which is valid, but unfortunatly it was enabled by avoiding actual OS development and simply taking other people's work in a lot of cases, while building on a foundation(Linux) that they did not have to pay for. Which is fine on the last point, but again it puts a major hit on the idea that they were 'innovative', Linus and his team innovated the OS, Google just assembled a bunch of pieces and tossed their own me-too services on top of it.

It's an immature response because it puts up a strawman that it's impossible to respond with both innovation and lawsuits, and that to defend what you believe is yours is unreasonable. The schoolyard analogy is to claim they should have fought fairly instead of tattling to the teacher.

What an ironic comment...Maybe they are "defending what they believe is theirs" or are just sue-happy, like what he actually said.

I'm just wondering what is he going to say if the decision that HTC is guilty of infringing Apple's patents is upheld? Google accusing Apple of being sue-happy really only makes sense if Apple actually loses. Otherwise if Apple is legally vindicated, is Google going to continue to say Apple should just ignore enforcing their patents and just innovate.

It's not about identifying different types of data, its about doing that intelligently inside UNSTRUCTURED data. For example, you open a generic document from a web site, and inside that document are addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and more. You know what a formal letter looks like as does anyone who passed 5th grade, but try explaining that to a computer. Thats hard enough when you have a basic data structure like a formal letter, not try doing it for a tweet, or data dumped out of some web script. This is a VERY complex task, practically bordering on AI. And it;'s not just limited to phone numbers and URLs and addresses, and it has to do all this without actually looking anything up online itself to verify the data is what it thinks it is.

Please tell me that you don't really believe that one company should be able to patent the right to search a block of text for a 10-digit phone number and replace it with a link to the phone dialer? Or finding text beginning with "http" and making it a link to the web browser.

Do you... really ... believe that's good, fair, right, productive, regardless of whether the dumbshit US Patent office approved it. If the names of the companies weren't Apple or Google, would you have the same arguments? I'll admit to being a bit of a Google partisan, but only because I agree with their actions in these cases and I strongly, in every fiber of my being, disagree with Apple.

Bingo, not to mention both patents in question are not mobile specific, in fact they by far pre-date the iPhone. This was a single judge making the ruling in which a few months ago ITC's very own members agreed that Apple case holds little merit. Once it is infront of a 6 person panel, I just don't see it going the same way for Apple. Its quite clear these are not mobile patents and as such prior are from ANY field will essentially make them moot. They are also choosing the ITC for a reason, its not only faster, but they can't really have their patents invalidated. Mark my words we won't be seeing any Federal court rulings going Apples way with generic patents like these.

The is a clear case of the big guy picking on the little guy backed by a clearly flawed patent system. Its not a matter of what or what does not apply, its a matter of how big your patent portfolio is. HTC was easy pickings for Apple, but people are kidding themselves if they think it will go the same way for Samsung and co whom have more than enough patents keep the countersuits going for years.

I truly do see both sides of this, regardless of my belief that Google > Apple.

Apple takes great strides to ensure their profitability. Their users are pretty damned loyal (to a fault, in many cases). They are genius at marketing things that have been done before and making them seem boldly new.

I do feel that patents are not specific enough and are worded in such a way as to ensure that they are overly technical in text, but simple in practice. I, like Eric Schmidt, feel that companies such as Apple ARE putting far too much effort into litigation instead of innovation.

There are so many wonderful things that Apple COULD contribute to the world if they actually dared try harder. I don't think Apple coders, designers, or other form of conceptualists in their employ are stupid. I do, however, think they're insufficiently utilized.

It's an immature response because it puts up a strawman that it's impossible to respond with both innovation and lawsuits, and that to defend what you believe is yours is unreasonable. The schoolyard analogy is to claim they should have fought fairly instead of tattling to the teacher.

What an ironic comment...Maybe they are "defending what they believe is theirs" or are just sue-happy, like what he actually said.

I'm just wondering what is he going to say if the decision that HTC is guilty of infringing Apple's patents is upheld? Google accusing Apple of being sue-happy really only makes sense if Apple actually loses. Otherwise if Apple is legally vindicated, is Google going to continue to say Apple should just ignore enforcing their patents and just innovate.

99% of the people that have actually read the patents in question know that they are the product of a lax patent system. They should have never been accepted in the first place (and its very likely they won't hold up in Federal court), so even if HTC were to lose it does not really prove Apples case (not to mention other companies are currently fighting to have these patents invalidated, and if this were to occur any kind of block on HTC would be lifted). It merely once again proves that the patent system is broken. Though you can't really hate the playa when the game is at fault

On another note, I'm pretty annoyed by the Ars writer who's ONLY opinion that he contributed to the article was to counter Schmidt's comments as the closing remarks. "We don't think Apple is doing this because... blah blah."

These patents are so ridiculous that I have to wonder what all those companies that built DSP (Digital Signal Processors) over all those many years before Apple even thought of an iAnything thinks!

Agreed. Makes me wish I had patented the rectangle.

Read the actual patents, not just the title. Both are pretty specific from what I understand. Titles on patents are really misleading.

Furthermore, Microsoft, RIM and HP/Palm all seem to have managed just fine without infringing these patents.

I have zero sympathy for Google here. They slapped together a copycat OS built on other people's work and handed it off 'for free' to others with no legal cover. Those who took them up on the offer are facing the consequences of that poor business decision.

For the record, I am NOT an Apple fanboy, I own nothing the company makes, and I think their software engineering is garbage. But I do think they are in the right here.

Did you read the patents? They are even worse that I had believed. Really, finding structures in data? Determining how to deal with different types of data being received at the same time?

Software patents are about as productive as patenting paragraphs in a book and add up to the same thing!

Sounds like you never read past the abstract. That, or you didn't comprehend what you read. The valid parts of the patent are in the claims section. Everything else is but background to help the person who reads it understand what the patent actually is.

It's not about identifying different types of data, its about doing that intelligently inside UNSTRUCTURED data. For example, you open a generic document from a web site, and inside that document are addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and more. You know what a formal letter looks like as does anyone who passed 5th grade, but try explaining that to a computer. Thats hard enough when you have a basic data structure like a formal letter, not try doing it for a tweet, or data dumped out of some web script. This is a VERY complex task, practically bordering on AI. And it;'s not just limited to phone numbers and URLs and addresses, and it has to do all this without actually looking anything up online itself to verify the data is what it thinks it is.

Not only that, but the idea that everyone else infringes is ridiculous. There are several ways of going about this task, Apple has patented the method they use. I have worked on projects that do similiar tasks and have used other methodologies. Apple is in no way preventing the results of their patent from others, they are protecting the methods they specifically use.

I see no evidence that others do this the exact same way, or that Google could not have approached it differently. In fact, Google's entire forte is their ability to gain relevant information from random documents and present it to a user in a way that makes it useful. Why they couldn't leverage that skillset to accomplish this task in a non-infringing manner is beyond me, and smacks of laziness.

It's not about identifying different types of data, its about doing that intelligently inside UNSTRUCTURED data. For example, you open a generic document from a web site, and inside that document are addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and more. You know what a formal letter looks like as does anyone who passed 5th grade, but try explaining that to a computer. Thats hard enough when you have a basic data structure like a formal letter, not try doing it for a tweet, or data dumped out of some web script. This is a VERY complex task, practically bordering on AI. And it;'s not just limited to phone numbers and URLs and addresses, and it has to do all this without actually looking anything up online itself to verify the data is what it thinks it is.

Only software (e.g.: word processors and email clients) has been doing that for years. Of course apple has been sitting on these patents for more than 15 years, so they also pre-date the iAnything.

However, did Apple sue anyone (including Microsoft) for violating these patents earlier and try to enforce them (because that would cover a hell of a lot of software)? Or did they just decide to sit on them and use them if ever the need arose? Sure that is trolling and a bitch move, however, it is legally legit, and Apple, probably would have to do something to protect the interest of their share holders, and would be neglient if they didn't file their claims against Google, HTC and others.

Then again, Apple wouldn't want to sue Microsoft, as Apple surely also violates some of Microsoft patents (it would seems that just about everyone who writes anything entirely non-trivial violates someone's patents somewhere), and they're just swap counter-claims for increasingly outrageous amounts of money, until they bothed decided to settle or to drop their claims.

The camera from the locked screen was a WP7 innovation and it appears that messages on the locked screen was theirs as well. Silly Zif Davis Android fanboy, Apple is an equal opportunity copier.

What's interesting is the article in the 21st Century Business Herald (English Chinese Business Newspaper) about the ITC issue with HTC and Apple:

Some of these vendors (chinese cell phone manufacturers) worry about the risk of becoming embroiled in patent infringement due to adoption of Android, and have drawn up three strategies to cope with potential impact. The three strategies are enhancement of support to Microsoft Mango operating system, promotion of smartphone customization by mobile telecom carriers for protection through binding common interest (especially carriers partnering with Apple and Microsoft), self-development of own operating systems, the source pointed out. China-based smartphone vendors Huawei Device and ZTE have planned to adopt Mango, the source indicated.

I like a quote from further in the article stating that Google didn't pay much attention to intellectual property rights resulting in code tainted with original sin.